A Paris Adventure (cont.)

Making macarons!

Day 7 

We awoke to cloudy skies and intermittent rain. But it didn't matter, because we had indoor activities planned for the day! After breakfasting at the apartment, we took an Uber to the outskirts of town, where the 17th and 18th arrondissements meet.

For my birthday in January, my work peeps had joined together to buy a macaron-making class! And all of my traveling companions had signed up for it, too! We all gathered (along with a few other students) in the perfectly pink bakery at Les secrets gourmands de Noémie. Our instructor Noémie was ready for us, with aprons, supplies and ingredients all laid out for us to make two different flavors of macarons.

We learned so much! First of all, making macarons is HARD. You have to start by making both the cookie batter and the filling. And since we were making two different flavors, we had to make double batches of each. We learned that the flavor of the cookie itself doesn't change, just the coloring you add to it. Where the flavor difference comes in is in the filling.

We carefully piped the cookie batter onto templated sheets of wax paper with tons of little circles on them. (You want all of the cookies to be a uniform size, so they match up with one another when you sandwich them together.) As you bake those off, you make the filling. Then, when everything is finished and cooled, you build the macarons!

We made pistachio and lemon varieties, and they were fantastic!! I ate MANY of them before we even left the bakery. (And needless to say, not a single one survived the trip back home to the States.) This was a delightful activity, and it made me decide to sign up for more "lessons" when I'm traveling. We got to meet people, see a different part of the city and learn something new. (Plus - COOKIES.)

When our class was over, we stopped in a nearby cafe for lunch. (I had a huge, glorious seafood stew with great heaps of bread - DIVINE. Especially since I had so much sugar in my stomach!)

Monet's Water Lilies

By now, it was raining in earnest. Several of our party decided to head back to the apartment for a break. I've always thought that rainy days were museum days, though, and there was one on my list! I caught an Uber to the Musée de l'Orangerie. Though not one of the large, flagship museums synonymous with Paris, I'd heard that the custom installation of Monet's Water Lilies here was incredible.

Coco Chanel portrait by Laurencin

I wasn't disappointed. There are four large pieces, showing the water lily pond in different seasons and light, arranged symmetrically in an oval room. The work wraps around you, and you can get quite close to it. Deep blues and purples, pinks and golds, flashes of white. Benches at the center of the room allow you to sit and contemplate. There's something very serene about it that makes me think of the Rothko Chapel in Houston.

Though this room may be the museum's headliner, there's plenty of other art there to pique your interest - Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Cézanne. I loved the pillowy Renoirs and the elegant portrait of Coco Chanel by Laurencin. It's a treasure of a  collection, and easily do-able in a few hours.

It was still raining when I came out of the museum, so I caught a quick car back to the apartment and called it an early night.

Day 8

It was a beautiful morning, which was good. Because on day 8, Susan, Caron, and I were going to Versailles! (Shawn had been on a previous trip and had no desire to return this time. Caron, on the other hand, felt like this was the one place on Earth she truly belonged. Years had passed since her last visit, and she couldn't get back there fast enough.)

Much to Susan's thrifty chagrin, Caron and I decided we should take a car there and back. As Caron noted, "I certainly don't think Marie Antoinette would have trudged into Versailles from public transportation." (Hard to argue with that.)

We arrived right when the palace opened, and we'd pre-purchased our tickets, so we moved swiftly through the line to get in. We all got audio guides (some of them worked better than others) and began exploring.

Oh, Versailles. You are a wonder.

What can anyone say about Versailles? Gilt, chandeliers, elaborately painted ceilings, statuary, wood inlay, furniture and fabrics. The work and money that must have gone into this place - astronomical. (No wonder the sans culottes turned to revolution.) Room after room after room of expensive opulence.

We broke for lunch at an Angelina cafe on-site, where I had a delightful quiche and salad with a glass of white wine. I followed it with a decadent raspberry dessert while we chatted and cooled our heels a bit. Then, it was off to the gardens.

The apartments of the mesdames - the king's unwed daughters

As it was still March, we didn't really get the full effect of the gardens. What we could understand, though, was the formal structure of them. (And it was easy to see how they'd been designed to allow for pockets of privacy throughout. I bet all kinds of shenanigans were going on out there!)

We next explored the Estate of Trianon, which also houses Marie Antoinette's "hamlet," where she liked to escape court and pretend to be a peasant for a while. It was almost like a movie set - a rich person's idea of what a perfect little village should be like.

By this time, our feet were ready for relief! We made our way back up through the gardens and caught a car back to the apartment, where we rested for a while before venturing out for dinner. We stayed close to home that night, opting for drinks and salads at Malabar near the apartment.

On the way back home, we picked up a few souvenirs and observed the Eiffel Tower lit brilliantly in the darkness. Gorgeous.

Rose window at Notre Dame

Day 9

On our last full day in Paris, we all went sightseeing together. We started at the lovely Notre Dame. Entrance was free, and though the line was long, it moved quickly. Once inside, we admired the statuary and the vaulted ceiling. As I gazed up at the famous rose windows, I could hear the church choir practicing somewhere nearby. Even in the midst of the other visitors, it was ethereal.

I remain extremely glad that we visited Notre Dame on this trip, because less than a month later, a catastrophic fire nearly led to the church's collapse. How lucky and blessed we were to get to see this beautiful place before such a disaster. Providence.

After Notre Dame, we caught a quick bite to eat and then pointed our steps toward Sainte-Chappelle, a gothic gem that's a miracle of stained glass. I'd been to this chapel on my first visit to Paris, and I was excited to return. There's just something sacred here, and you feel it when you walk in.

This royal chapel was built in the 1200s to house famous Christian relics. There's a darker, lower chapel (which was used by palace staff), and an airy, upper chapel - the place where the relics were housed, and used only by the king, his close friends and those leading services. The upper chapel is a wonder. The walls are more stained glass than stone, and the air inside is colored by their filtered light. It's like being inside a butterfly wing. Magical.

Sainte-Chappelle's upper chapel feels like being inside a butterfly wing

Then, while Shawn spent some quality time with her son, Susan, Caron and I wandered a bit. We shopped for souvenirs. (I found the CUTEST clothes for baby Maggie! Some little dresses, a pink raincoat with a peaked hood!) We discovered a really cool bookstore with an underground grotto that Susan flipped over. We ambled all through the Latin Quarter, locating Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie again so Caron could enjoy it (so atmospheric - just what you think an old Parisian street should be like).

ALL the fondue. All of it.

When we got hungry, we found a completely campy fondue place - Le Chalet St. Michel. The host seated us underneath a GIANT stuffed moose head, and we ate ALL. THE. CHEESE. SO much cheese, ya'll. With all kinds of lovelies for dipping - bread, potatoes, veggies, etc. We drank tons of wine and had mounds of profiteroles for dessert and couldn't stop laughing and talking. (We named the moose. That's all you need to know.)

We walked back to the apartment very slowly, savoring our last night in Paris and taking photos of odd street art and glimmering shop windows. Oh, Paris! Love, love, love.

The next morning, it was pack-airport-plane-home. What I took away from this trip was that we should all be traveling with our friends more. I do a fair amount of solo travel for business. And I do a fair amount of family travel, which I love. But there's something about hitting the road with your friends that is hard to duplicate otherwise. I'll be doing it more in the future.

Trips with your friends,  people. Take them. Just take them.